~
His wife,
Lotte Lenya
is usually the "spokesperson" for his music; she had decades of
experience working with Weill and her interpretations are considered the
last word.
She was born Martha Haftel in Vienna. She studied classical singing in
Austria
and
France. After her Jewish family fled to Britain in 1938, she began
performing in an internment camp on the
Isle of Man.
Engel Lund, an
Icelandic singer, introduced her to the international repertory, and
after
World War II she began performing folk songs and
Yiddish songs in
London.
She married Hans Schlamme in the
mid-1940's - a marriage that ended in divorce - and immigrated to the
United States in 1948. She quickly established a national reputation
with a program called Songs of Many Lands.
Miss Schlamme also acted in non-Weill plays and musicals. She made her
Broadway debut in 1968 as Golde in
Fiddler on the Roof, and also
appeared on
Broadway in the Robert Anderson play
Solitaire, Double
Solitaire. She performed in the 1968
Off-Broadway production
Month
of Sundays, and the
Long Wharf Theater 1970 production of
Country People, by
Maxim Gorky, and its 1971 production of Gorky's
Yegor
Bulichov. She also created a number of one-woman shows, including
A
Woman Without a Man Is... and
The Jewish Woman.
Kurt Julian Weill was born on March 2, 1900, in the Jewish quarter in
Dessau in
Saxony, where his father was a
cantor. In February 1924 the conductor
Fritz Busch introduced him to the dramatist
Georg Kaiser, with whom Weill would have a long-lasting creative partnership resulting in several one-act operas. At Kaiser's house in
Grünheide, Weill first met singer/actress
Lotte Lenya in the summer of 1924.
The couple were married twice: in 1926 and again in 1937 (following
their divorce in 1933). She took great care to support Weill's work, and
after his death she took it upon herself to increase awareness of his
music, forming the Kurt Weill Foundation.
Weill fled
Nazi Germany
in March 1933. A prominent and popular Jewish composer, Weill was
officially denounced for his populist views and sympathies, and became a
target of the Nazi authorities, who criticized and interfered with
performances of his later stage works, such as
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (
Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, 1930),
Die Bürgschaft (1932), and
Der Silbersee
(1933). With no option but to leave Germany, he went first to Paris,
where he worked once more with Brecht (after a project with
Jean Cocteau failed) on the ballet
The Seven Deadly Sins.
On April 13, 1933 his musical The Threepenny Opera was given its premiere on Broadway, but closed after 13 performances to mixed reviews.
Weill and Lenya moved to New York City on September 10, 1935; they rented an old house with
Paul Green during the summer of 1936 near
Pine Brook Country Club in
Nichols, Connecticut, the summer home of the
Group Theatre, while finishing
Johnny Johnson. Some of the other artists who summered there in 1936 were;
Elia Kazan,
Harry Morgan,
John Garfield,
Lee J. Cobb,
Will Geer,
Clifford Odets,
Howard Da Silva and
Irwin Shaw.
Rather than continue to write in the same style that had characterized
his European compositions, Weill made a study of American popular and
stage music.
Weill suffered a heart attack shortly after his 50th birthday and died on April 3, 1950, in New York City. He was buried in Mount Repose Cemetery in
Haverstraw, New York. The text and music on his gravestone come from the song
A Bird of Passage from his play,
Lost in the Stars.
Tracklist:
Side 1:
A1 - Bilbao Song
A2 - J'Attends Un Navire
A3 - Lonely House
A4 - Susan's Dream
A5 - Mack The Knife
A6 - Thousands Of Miles
Side 2:
B1 - Surabaya Johnny
B2 - My Ship
B3 - Barbara's Song
B4 - Le Roi D'Aquitaine
B5 - Lost In The Stars
B6 - Alabama Song
Credits:
Arranged By – Abraham Stokman, Will Holt, Samuel Matlovsky
Composed By – Kurt Weill
Directed By – Abraham Stokman, Will Holt
Photography By [Cover] – Lee Friedlander
Producer [Album produced by] – Danny Davis (4)
Producer [Produced By] – Tanya Chasman, E. Albert Gilbert*
Recorded By [Recording Engineer] – Phil Ramone
Recording Supervisor [Director of Engineering] – Val Valentin
Screenwriter – Will Holt
Sleeve Notes [Album Notes] – Will Holt
Voice Actor – Martha Schlamme, Will Holt
Notes:
An MGM Original Cast Recording
Album Notes in English by Will Holt
Barcode and Other Identifiers
Matrix / Runout (Runout side A): E-4180 SIDE-I 63-MG-634 F.G.
Matrix / Runout (Runout side B): E-4180 SIDE-2 63-MG-635 F.G.
Martha Schlamme – The World Of Kurt Weill In Song
Label: MGM Records – SE4052P
Format: Vinyl, LP, Stereo
Country: US
Released:
Genre: Pop, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Cabaret
